Page:The Spirit of the Chinese People.djvu/128

 himself with her for one night, throws her away again on the pavement of the public street the next morning. The Chinese mandarin with his concubines may be selfish, but he at least provides a house for his concubines and holds himself for life responsible for the maintenance of the women he keeps. In fact, if the mandarin is selfish, I say that the European in his motor car is not only selfish, but a coward. Ruskin says, “The honour of a true soldier is verily not to be able to slay, but to be willing and ready at all times to be slain.” In the same way I say, the honour of a woman. [sic]—a true woman in China, is not only to love and be true to her husband, but to live absolutely, selflessly for him,. [sic] In fact, this Religion of Selflessness is the religion of the woman, especially, the gentlewoman or lady in China, as the Religion of Loyalty which I have tried elsewhere to explain, is the religion of the man,—the gentleman in China. Until foreigners come to understand these two religions, the “Religion of Loyalty and the Religion of Selflessness” of the Chinese people, they can never understand the real Chinaman, or the real Chinese woman.

But people will again say to me, “What about love? Can a man who really loves his wife have the heart to have other women besides her in his house?” To this I answer, yes,—Why not? For the real test that a husband really loves his wife is not that he should spend his whole life in lying down at her feet and caressing her. The real test whether a man truly loves his wife is whether he is anxious and